


the space your name makes

by anthropologicalhands



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, In a manner of speaking, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 08:36:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14787086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthropologicalhands/pseuds/anthropologicalhands
Summary: Where the world is a book and every leaf a testament to a person’s relationships, Rebecca Bunch is a blank page.It’s not a compliment, a promise of potential to be had; there’s something wrong with her.In a world where the names of your most important relationships write themselves across your body, Rebecca Bunch believes in soulmates. As ever, the situation is more nuanced than that.





	the space your name makes

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god this is finally done. What started off as the Rebecca half for [every body is a ledger](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14374626) eventually morphed into a monster of a oneshot that basically runs through the entire plot, except with soulmarks. To be honest, as someone who does not believe in the concept of a single soulmate, I really, really love soulmate aus in fanfic, and I wanted to see if I could try out what one would look like in our favorite heightened reality. Thank you for reading!

 

Where the world is a book and every leaf a testament to a person’s relationships, Rebecca Bunch is a blank page.

It’s not a compliment, a promise of potential to be had; there’s something wrong with her.

Her mother says that she isn’t missing anything –connections have to be nurtured, they don’t just appear, and unless there is some professor or hotshot who can help her career, she shouldn’t waste her time chasing them.

It doesn’t stop Rebecca from watching in envy as her classmates fall all over each other and break off into pairs and trios and quartets, clasping hands the moment they discover they share names, confident in their friendships, tracing their soulmarks in markers and pens to share them with the world, despite the teachers’ admonishments, the same way they write in each other’s yearbooks: all hearts and pink neon flowers and BFFs surrounded by clouds.

Rebecca spends hours glaring at herself in the mirror, trying to picture people who might be her friends, to will names over her arms and neck and across her nose.

But it never works.

The only name that gives her companionship in childhood is _Audra Levine_ , curved around the shell of her ear, whispering that there’s always someone better.

It’s one of the very few subjects in their long rivalry that they never touch. Rebecca knows, without having to ask, that Audra Levine also has _Rebecca Bunch_ printed somewhere on her body.

(She hopes it’s somewhere embarrassing—like a tramp stamp.)

It’s why they will always circle each other, even if they are just biting and snarling in some predestined fight for dominance.

No matter how hard she tries, nobody else ever comes close enough. Ever _wants_ to come close enough.

Until Josh Chan.

Josh Chan from the beach, with warm brown eyes and strong arms, who smiles with dimples and who tilts his head in just the right way to listen when they talk, so that she knows he is paying attention.

Who always knows how to make her feel better.

He’s not her first crush, or even her first boyfriend, but he’s the first one beyond her mother’s iron grip and every inch the more beautiful for it. She knows it when they sing the camp song for the first time –many of the other kids are still a little self-conscious, but not them. Together, they belt the lyrics at the top of their lungs, ignoring the team leaders’ frozen smiles and beaming at each other, mentally in tune if not vocally.

By the next evening, _Josh_ loops around Rebecca’s left wrist in bright, cheerful strokes the shade of the California summer sky, standing out clearly against the beginnings of her tan. She stares at it, drags a nail lightly through the ‘o’, to make sure it isn’t some marker prank the other girls might have pulled on her. She pinches it, runs it under the tap to be sure, and it’s still there.

Her heart seizes up in her shock, but then restarts, her pulse hammering into a crescendo. She has to lean against the sink, knees weak, lightheaded with giddiness.

She drags him out of the dining hall after dinner, too excited to keep it to herself. Conventions be damned, so what if they’ve only known each other a little while? He’s going to be important to her, she should _tell_ him that.

He listens to her hasty explanation intently, elbows braced on his knees.

“Wow,” he says, when she finishes. “My name’s on you?”

“Yeah,” says Rebecca, the giddiness fading, her insides suddenly crawling with doubt. Maybe she’s done the entirely wrong thing and told him too fast and now he’s going to walk away form her and the name is going to go away and she’s going to be stuck knowing that it is all her fault, that she doesn’t deserve to have names if she can’t even keep them to herself for five minutes. She balls her hands into fists, to keep from chewing on her nails.

 “Bex, that’s _great_.”

“Really?” she asks, too quickly and unsure.

“Yeah,” says Josh, his mouth quirked up into the beginnings of his golden smile. He reaches over and puts his arm around her shoulder. “You beat me to it. I was gonna tell you—you’re on me too.”

He laughs when her jaw drops open, gaping unattractively, genuinely thrown off.

“I am?” she asks, trying to sound disaffected, careless, rather than like she’s pressing up against his every word, hungry to know how she has actually affected _someone_ for once in her life.

He nods in affirmation and gestures to his left side.

“Right along the ribs,” he says. “Kind of like Eve to Adam. Pretty cool, huh?”

Rebecca pretends to laugh, her hand on his chest, dragging her palm to smooth over his side, over the spot where she imagines her name is inscribed under his heart.

“Pretty cool indeed,” she echoes, feeling the heat of the letters, unable to believe her luck. Not only does she have a real name, a _good_ name from a good person on her, but it’s her _soulmate’s_ , at sixteen years old, in summer camp.

What could be more perfect?

~

It’s just like the movies: that moment when the two lovers finally, _finally_ reach out to each other to trace the other’s name on their skin, the one name that makes all the difference.

Yes, she knows those aren’t accurate representations of soulmarks: budget demands that only the most plot-relevant soulmarks be inked on the characters’ bodies for the audience’s visual shorthand, but that doesn’t mean that soulmates aren’t real.

Josh with his shirt off is still Josh with his shirt off –to her the expanse of skin is without flaw. But now that he’s told her where her name is, she can feel it, can trace the letters by following the heat signature when they make out or cuddle, and he does the same with his fingers along the inside of her wrist.

Maybe, when they know each other inside and out, she’ll be able to read her name without just heat to guide her, the way the movies sometimes do.

A soulmate is a person who fits into you, fills up all of the parts that feel empty.

Rebecca has found her soulmate—she _knows_.

~

But then summer ends, and after they have washed off the paint and hung up the costumes, Josh breaks up with her.

She doesn’t see it coming.

In the span of hours between leaving the airport and hailing the cab home, Rebecca ignores Naomi’s lectures and impending threats as she watches Josh’s name go from cerulean to pale gray as the distance stretches between them, the strokes stretching thinner.

At the very least, Josh’s name didn’t fade completely. She knows the horror stories, seen the tears and shouting in the schoolyards over broken friendships and lost first loves.

That…must mean something, right?

~

She doesn’t return to camp that year, or the year after.

In college she has more false starts than she cares to think about, pencil thin scratchings that never amount to anything deeper and leave no traces when they vanish. By the end of law school, the only new mark of note is the faded burn on her ankle. No names write themselves in New York, and her life is dull and gray and her blank skin is so _cold_ , even under the sweltering summers.

But then Josh steps around the corner on the streets of New York right in the middle of her panic attack. They reconnect, the exchange sweet but far too short.

When she turns his card over in her hands, a flash of blue catches her eye. She flips her wrist to see his name flushing to its original hue.

Of course it would –she’s decided to go where the happiness is.

 ~

Josh may not be waiting in West Covina with open arms as she hoped, but someone else is there to take her hands as the blood rushes to her cheeks and she feels _alive_ for the first time in years.

After the party, Rebecca undresses to find _Paula_ arcing over her left breast in a flowing purple script. She traces the letters, looks hard in the mirror and pinches her cheek to make sure she isn’t just dreaming; nearly cries at the vivid sharpness of the proof.

People lie to her, but her skin never has.

How incredible, she’s barely been in West Covina a day and already her soulmate has brought someone new into her life.

Paula Proctor will be her friend.

~

And what a friend! Paula’s name grows darker every day, the script even sharper than Josh’s. Maybe it’s the proximity of working together in the same office, or Paula’s utter willingness to just _help_ —no one has ever tried to help her before, she’s always been the competition or a target or an example.

It’s so nice to be looked after—like she’s sixteen, except it’s how sixteen was supposed to feel the first time, with a mother who makes confusing references and can be a little embarrassing, but still knows what’s best and will help with parties and camp and tips on getting the boy of her dreams to notice her.

“Your first soulmate is important,” says Paula, brandishing half a cookie pizza at her. “Don’t _ever_ let him get away. Don’t be like me. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

“You mean you _don’t_ have your husband’s name?” Rebecca asks incredulously.

“I do: legally _and_ psychosomatically. I wouldn’t have married him otherwise. But what I’m saying is that it didn’t necessarily help: our marriage is _terrible_. A true soulmate is something special and let me tell you, Scott is _not_ it.”

~

According to Josh, there is a Rosetta stone’s worth of script running across his body.

“I know a lot of people,” he says, shrugging, his charming smile a little abashed as they pore through his Instagram feed together at the boba stand.

This makes sense to Rebecca, even if she can’t see it for herself—Josh has always moved with an ease among people, confident of how to speak with them. Even more than the proximity of him, seeing Josh so comfortable amidst an enormous family and his gang of childhood friends makes her look down at the unmarked expanse of her skin with a pang.

If her and Josh are soulmates, then there really isn’t any reason that she can’t be friends with Josh’s friends, right? No reason that the names that mark him wouldn’t rub off onto her.

Paula is less than impressed with her logic.

“Cookie, it doesn’t work like that,” warns Paula, as they wait for the coffee pot in the break room. “You can’t force friendships.”

Rebecca doesn’t listen, because the promise of a sleeve of names around Josh’s, evidence that she fits here in his life, is too tempting to resist. Even Valencia’s, which she almost had before, until she ruined it by kissing her.

She doesn’t get the names, but she gets something else: Josh telling her that he’s glad she’s returned, that she’s here. The air harmonizes between them, the way it does in the movies, the way it did the first time at camp, and they are of the same thought and mind. She’s so full of love for him that she could burst, that she knows that his hand is all she would ever need.

The disappointment still gnaws at the edges of her mind but she can ignore it more easily.

~

Greg’s name is jotted across her right shoulderblade.

It showed up the morning after their Thanksgiving tête-à-tête and hasn’t faded since, has only grown more prominent, even if she has to twist her back to see it properly. The sharp scratch of the letters both make her self-conscious, mindful of his judgment, but also reassure her of his presence, since when it really matters, he will help her out.

Not that either feeling particularly explains _why_ his name is there.

Paula’s name makes sense –she’s played a key role in helping her and Josh rebuild their connection, after all.

But _Greg?_

Greg who doesn’t have anything nice to say about soulmates?

“It’s a dumb concept,” he likes to say. “You can tell who the most important people in your life are by some weird biochemical graffiti? That makes no sense! What about politicians? I’m not walking around with the mayor’s name tattooed on my ass, but he is definitely impacting my quality of life.”

Sure, they’re friends now, he calls her on her shit, and they have fun together, but does that really warrant such importance?

She likes Greg, she does, but she has a love story to write.

The presence of his name does make her soften a little towards him, despite Paula’s very vocal protests.

“Be careful with him,” says Paula. “You don’t even know if he has your name on him. Josh does—Josh _told_ you he does. Just remember that, it’s _important_.”

~

It’s a good thing that she doesn’t have a soulmark for Trent, because his insistence on calling her his soulmate is slightly…uncomfortable, and the certainty that he’s wrong keeps her centered.

It goes from uncomfortable to outright freaky when he proudly shows her the back of his knee, where _Rebecca_ is tattooed in bold Roman letters.

“The artist warned me against it: your name is right on one of the highest pain points in the human body,” he tells her proudly, oblivious to her horror. “It was four hours of debilitating pain, but worth every second to prove our love.”

There’s no way to tell that he’s lying, but also no way to confirm that he isn’t telling the truth, either.

Still, that revelation is enough to put Rebecca off Paula’s suggestion that she do the same to prove her love for Josh (not that she was considering it seriously in the first place, because _needles_ ) and be grateful she chose uncovering conspiracies as her method of choice.  Much simpler.

**~**

Josh kissed her.

Josh _kissed_ her!

When he does, his hand closes over hers, skims over his name and _lingers_ there, and he shifts closer when she brings her hand up his side.

At Paula’s house, recounting every moment, she keeps getting distracted by the sight of his name on her wrist, the deepest blue she has seen yet.

He comes to her, just like the pivotal scene in every two-and-a-half star movie, and finally admits to their connection. The name on Rebecca’s wrist is almost glowing with warmth and she’s so full of love for him that at any moment her true feelings are going to burst right out of her the way water bursts from a pipe.

Except…

Then he says it was _wrong_ , to act on their connection.

Confusion knots in her stomach.

Why is he hesitating? He’s her soulmate and he _has_ to know that now. No matter how many names he’s gathered over the years, the draw between them is special.

Why doesn’t he stay with her?

Sure, he needs to tell Valencia, and _absolutely_ , they are going to break up. Because they are not right for each other, anyways. Of course they have soulmarks—fifteen years together is nothing to sneeze at, after all, it’s impossible that they wouldn’t have an effect on each other. Rebecca totally gets that. It’s just…she and Josh have something different, something _good_. They are two halves of a whole.

But then she sees Valencia crying in their apartment through the window, and Josh with his head lowered, his posture devastated, and with a sickening jolt, wonders what she has done to their connection. Rebecca is the master of broken hearts and how betraying names burn, and she finds she can imagine what Valencia is going through perfectly.

Then Josh says he doesn’t love her, and she feels her skin go cold.

~

Rebecca runs away, except she doesn’t.

Instead, she thinks for a long time, goes on a trans dimensional trip through space and time with a dream ghost who encourages her to try to look again at the people who care for her.

Maybe…she needs to accept that her and Josh’s connection might not be quite what she thought and reconsider the other names she carries.

~

When Paula admits that she is afraid that their friendship would not survive a post-Josh world, Rebecca is quick to reassure her:

“I would _never_ stop being friends with you,” she says. “I have your name across my heart. I’ve never had that before; you’re always going to be important to me.”

Paula’s eyes soften.

“Oh, _Cookie_. Your name is just along my Caesarean scar. It’s really classed up that part of my uterus.”

~

Greg has been at her back (and frequently _on_ it) ever since she first came to West Covina and she feels…something, for him.

Yes, she’s messed up in the past, but they can still try. She didn’t check her shoulder for the hue of his name before she walked right back into Home Base—this is all her decision. They do get along, and she thinks she likes him, and she wants to see if his name might mean something different than she thought—not as another stepping stone to Josh but a destination in its own right.

She should try and give him a chance. He must be some kind of fit for her.

Maybe, with all of her bad habits, she just hadn’t been in the right place to notice before.

She just needs to finally admit to him how he’s touched her and finally hear from him about how she is important to him. He hasn’t offered it and she hasn’t quite had a chance to ferret out the information herself, as the heat of sex distracts her from seeking her name and they haven’t exactly been walking down East Cameron hand-in-hand.

They just need the right moment to begin their lives together, and she knows right where to start.

~

“Have you found your _bashert_ yet?” Moshe asks her.

“Your soulmate,” he clarifies, when she just looks at him bemusedly.

Of course, Josh walks right through that door. Rebecca stares wide-eyed, longer than she wants to, and he’s looking right back, and he’s talking about engagement rings and she’s just babbling her congratulations and other inanities, gesturing towards him and trying not to notice how his eyes keep darting to her wrist as they talk, almost like his eyes are drawn there by some force more powerful than he.

But she leaves the store and puts it behind her. She has someone else. Josh was not who she thought he was to her. She does not look down at her wrist.

~

At the wedding, she does her best, wears a dress that exposes her shoulders, prepping herself to be ready for the magic. But Greg barely looks at her, keeps drinking more and more, not pausing for one perfect moment where she can tell him how she feels, what he is to her, to bring his hand to trace his name across her shoulder.

“I care about you,” she says, trying to start simple.

“I think…you’re cool,” he says, smiling and wasted.

She tries again. “I mean, that’s good, but I meant something a little more than that.” She reaches out to take his hand, to press his fingertips to the name he cannot see, but _surely,_ he’ll be able to feel. “I mean that you’ve made an impression on me…”

But then Greg snatches his hand out of hers and stares hard into his palm, shaking his head, forehead creasing, his expression closed.

“Don’t,” he says. “It’s not gonna change anything. Let’s not make this more than it is.”

Rebecca looks at him wide-eyed, stung.

“What do you mean? I just want you to feel—”

“Well, you don’t need to. Soulmarks…they don’t mean anything special. We’re having fun, right?”

“Greg…” Rebecca says, heart sinking. “What are you saying? Don’t you have my name?”

Greg’s mouth presses in a firm line and he averts his gaze.

“I’m just saying. Let’s not, like, plan for a future.”

Then he slumps over, right at the bar, and it’s worse than a slap in the face, to be rejected so soundly.

Why didn’t he look at her?

~

She’s left standing alone at the wedding, overdressed and dejected, her shoulders cold, when she looks up to meet Josh’s eyes from across the room.

He texts her to meet him outside, and when she looks down to read the message, she catches sight of his name, the shade matching her dress.

~

Soulmates are real.

Josh knows her, he knew exactly what she needed. He’s no longer with Valencia. He kept her letter, right above her name. He takes her hand and lays it against his side, between the layers of his shirt and his leather jacket.

“You’re always here,” he says. “You always have been.”

She was right!

~

“I can’t wait for our love story to finally begin,” she says, and then it falls apart.

~

A month goes by, and she tries to fix it.

She tries _hard_ , with outstanding sex and homecooked meals and offering him a place to stay, but something’s _broken_ in their bond. Josh doesn’t touch her wrist in any special way, and he leans away when she tries to tuck herself into his side in the post-coital lull.

It’s not like he’s offering nothing. His gestures are just…smaller, is all. The little things he does and says everyday.

And that’s fine; they are soulmates, after all, he doesn’t have to give big gestures because she can interpret him just fine.

~

Paula doesn’t believe in them.

“All I’m saying,” begins Paula delicately. “Is that maybe you and Josh are not quite soulmates the way we thought.”

“What?” Rebecca’s voice pitches upwards, nearly a shriek; Paula winces and puts up her hands as if to put a shield between them. “Paula, that’s ridiculous, of course we’re soulmates.” Rebecca rubs at her wrist, running her fingers over Josh’s name, feeling the frantic throb of her pulse point, reminds herself that _it’s there it’s there it’s there,_ it’s not going away, not fading, not the way Greg’s has lost its sheen.

Paula’s no help, because apparently sex with her husband is amazing again and she’s rethinking the whole ‘one true soulmate’ thesis they have been running with for so long. Like, now she has this whole ‘other people will come into your life’ thing she’s trying out instead. Between that and law school her life is seriously falling into place and Rebecca’s happy for her, really and sincerely, but she also can’t help but wonder why even with Josh now officially in her life, why their pieces don’t also fit so perfectly together.

~

Greg vanished a month ago, and then it turns out he was in recovery for alcoholism (which she somehow missed). He’s a little quieter now, the good sense less abrasive.

“I was going to tell you I loved you,” he says. He holds up his bandaged hand, gently traces the curve of his palm. “That you’re right here.”

He shakes his head, smiling ruefully. “But I blew my shot. Life went on without me, and you and Josh should be happy. You shared your names with each other, right? You’re happy? He treats you well?”

Rebecca nods meekly, shivering, not trusting herself to speak. He nods slowly.

“Then everything worked out fine.”

~

For a single, shining moment, she decides she has a choice.

There is Josh on her arm and in her apartment, he just needs to make a commitment. But then, Greg would have said ‘I love you’ if he hadn’t been stopped, and that has to mean something, right? And he’s in recovery, he can change, make himself better for their future.

Josh on her left and in front of her eyes, Greg on her right and at her back.

One of them must be her soulmate, with the way their losses have _hurt_.

But which one?

None of the signs are clear, and then she gets one _horribly_ wrong, and Josh runs away. Her wrist aches as his name recedes to a fainter line. Greg kisses her on the bridge, and his name buzzes pleasantly each time she touches it. It _must_ be Greg – they can do things right this time, and they will be perfect for each other.

But Greg leaves.

He tells her he loves her, and she feels the warmth of his name on her back and in her heart and for a moment it looks like everything will fall into place, that he will take her hand and pick up his bag and forget their mistakes and come back to her.

But he still leaves.

His name burns like a fever, and when she finally drags herself to the shower, his name has turned fine and wispy, the color of pale ash.

~

Rebecca tells herself it will be fine; she’s had enough of boys, anyways.

No more pining after Greg or moping after Josh. Not when two amazing women have replaced them instead.

She’s had Heather’s name since they made the decision to move in together and try out this adulting thing. Valencia’s name writes itself at the Electric Mesa, between crying on each other’s shoulders and peeing on Josh’s stuff.

Their names, to Rebecca’s delight, are twinned across her biceps. She can stand tall and flex them, pretend she’s Wonder Woman. It’s the perfect metaphor, for they have become sources of solace and of strength, and together the three of them can hold up the sky.

Or overthrow the world—depends on the day.

~

Something’s been going on with Paula—her name is not as bright as it used to be. It’s duller and more mauve than purple now and Rebecca is panicking because she _can’t_ let her first friend slip away like this. Not when it’s half her fault. Josh was heartbreaking but at least she knows what caused it.

Naturally, she thinks that since she has Paula, and Valencia, and Heather’s names, that naturally they should have no problem imprinting on each other, either.

It all just depends on the right kind of mood.

 It’s only as the party drags on and Angelique-only-it’s-definitely-Karen is showing off some kind of tripod with backwards grooves and Paula is staring down at her phone without scrolling through anything that Rebecca remembers, belatedly, that not everyone she knows will necessarily be connected in the same way.

And then she sees the errant text and she snaps and Paula _explodes_ with a litany of injuries, and it’s hard to _breathe_ , with how Paula’s name burns and the color deadens.

~

She gets distracted, briefly, by Josh and his new girlfriend. But even that doesn’t keep her from returning to the problem with Paula.

This discoloration is untenable, makes her queasy and off-kilter. But if Paula has decided that she doesn’t want their relationship to be better, there is nothing she can do.

…Except then Scott cheats and Paula is _miserable_ and Rebecca’s not about to let that slide, not this time.

“You were right,” she tells Paula, yielding. “Every time we talk, I…I’m really just thinking about myself, and thinking about the next piece of advice to ask you for and I never think about you, and it’s horrible, because your name is on my heart and I love you and I’m here to help.”

Paula’s eyes fill with tears and Rebecca feels warmth pulse through her. But the relief comes later, when she doesn’t go away with Josh and stays with her and Paula says “I love you” again.

~

In the end, Rebecca runs into the arms of her soulmate once more. It’s almost anticlimactic, how her and Josh find each other again. Paula’s blessing and a kiss are all that it takes.

It’s so simple, and that’s how she knows it’s real, that they are meant for this, to be two halves of a whole. Why _wouldn’t_ it be easy?

Her wrist is blue again.

Everything will be perfect –he will be all she needs.

~

“The human flip-flop is your soulmate?” asks Nathaniel Plimpton, eyebrows high on his forehead, a faint smile playing about his mouth, the precise angle specifically calculated to infuriate. His eyes are keen as they study her, like he is trying to read her and succeeding more than he objectively should; Rebecca shifts uncomfortably in her seat, on edge, irritated.

There are many things that she despises about this new, suspiciously good-looking co-owner. Obviously, the top of the list is the threat to fire her friends. But this disdain for Josh is definitely clipping at it.

“Yes, my soulmate,” she reiterates, meeting his eyes firmly. “He’s not a flip flop, or a water cooler. He’s a man. He’s a human man. He’s the human man of my dreams, and I’ve known that for a fact since I was sixteen.”

“Huh,” He sits back in his chair. “You’re tying yourself to someone for life as your soulmate just because you held hands once at summer camp?”

“It’s more nuanced than that!” she shoots back. “And, further, that kind of ignorant drivel just means you haven’t met yours yet. Because it’s not just about us being soulmates—it’s about everyone, how a soulmate brings other people to you, people who _change your life_. You have to know _someone_ like that.”

“Not for me.” He meets her eyes calmly. “The connections you need are the ones you make on paper. Any names that aren’t on dotted lines are not to be trusted.”

Nathaniel has said many ridiculous things since he came into the office, but this is one of the first that leave her genuinely speechless. He must be exaggerating, must be really leaning into whatever macho corporate-lawyer schtick he’s trying to pull. She’s more comfortable now with the few but precious names she has, with Josh and Paula and the girls, but she still feels uncomfortably bare at times. Which is something Josh is going to change.

 “Wow. That’s cold,” she says.

He shrugs.

“It limits distractions. Connections should be fostered through practical exchanges, anyways, not psychosomatic calligraphy.”

“Well, that’s a major oversimplification of a very important aspect of the human psyche. I have some papers I could share with you about it—it’s not the name itself that’s important, it’s the bond—a connection _beyond_ words. He is an intrinsic part of my life and my being.”

He scoffs quietly. “My condolences.”

She narrows her eyes at him, but then a new message pops up on her phone and derails the conversation.

~

What does he know? Nathaniel puts her on edge, with his steady stare and stupid rules and his insistence on showing up at the absolutely wrong places at the worst times, making her hyperaware that every sentence out of Josh’s mouth is a little bit absurd, his French pronunciation atrocious, and the niggling annoyances she has been able to gloss over suddenly surge up into _problems_ , because that’s how this asshole works—he picks at any imperfection he can find until he can make something break.

Which is _insane_. Josh is her soulmate, he’s the Harvey to her Sabrina, the salt to her pepper, and—okay, sure, Josh values different things than she does, but that’s not what’s important to their relationship, it’s about how they love each other.

~

Whatever. His opinion doesn’t matter; she’s too busy sharing with the rest of the world how amazing it is to be in a relationship with your actual soulmate.

“You know,” says Heather, dragging out her words as she watches them write out their names in nontoxic markers for a soulmark selfie. “Studies show couples that insist on calling each other soulmates are often insecure about their attachment. It correlates with studies about couples who post a lot on social media.”

“Shut up Heather,” says Rebecca. “And correlation does not imply causation, _yeesh_.”

She has Josh’s name on her arm, she just wants people to know how happy it is possible to be, even when they’re flying back to the unhappiest place on Earth, Rebecca is still basking in the thought of bringing Josh there, united against the absolute horrorshow that is her family.

~

Seeing Audra Levine again always gives her an earache—too much relentless inane buzzing, and this year their bickering is particularly uninvigorating. But more pressing is that going home again just emphasizes those little hollow places, in her heart and her head, that it turns out Josh is not filling, after all. Not when he’s joined the crowd, taking hold of whatever thread binds them with ease, and left her behind.

Rebecca doesn’t want to be here anymore; she feels itchy under her dress, wants to tear it off, slough off her skin and be something else and run away.

And Josh Chan, love of her life, doesn’t even seem to notice.

Shouldn’t he be able to read her? Feel how miserable she is?

~

Maybe he did, because when she next sees him he’s getting down on one knee, Garfinkel ring in hand.

It is everything she’s ever wanted, and he proposed, so he must want it just as badly. They are back on the same page, perfectly in sync.

So…why hasn’t anything changed?

Shouldn’t she feel different? Feel better? They are going to metaphorically become one, so why doesn’t it feel like her gaps are being closed?

Shouldn’t she feel warmer? More at ease with herself?

Rebecca checks herself, over and over and over again, her eyes sliding from the dull sheen of the Garfinkel ring to Josh’s name and back, losing focus on the paperwork right in front of her. Josh’s name is still the same shade of blue it has been since they first got together – a powder blue that doesn’t change shade, somehow, despite the steps she takes to push their connection and make it deeper. Shouldn’t an impending marriage do that? Why is it that when Josh reaches for her hand there is no greater spark?

Nothing’s changed.

~

The Santa Ana winds roll through West Covina and she dreams about Nathaniel.

And, yes—it’s just _awkward_ standing next to someone and trying to act like you’ve never imagined them with their clothes off. But that’s not all: her skin keeps prickling into goosebumps and it’s becoming a problem. She checks her arms and the visible parts of her legs and it’s an ongoing struggle not to run to the ladies’ room and hike her dress right off to make sure this prickling isn’t the tracing of a new name somewhere across her lady limbs.

This is ridiculous. Josh is her soulmate, they are engaged, they will have the perfect venue and will be together forever. As Paula says, this will pass.

Everything will be fine.

But then the elevator goes out, and she’s trapped in a confined space with the man whose dream self is still swanning around the inside of her head, sticking his nose where he doesn’t belong, and he’s a secret Harry Potter nerd who can be persuaded that a night spent sorting their coworkers into different houses is a more interesting alternative to elevator sex.

It’s an entertaining conversation, and surprisingly comfortable once they give up on rescue and she kicks her shoes off. But that weird energy between them is still _there_ , crackling just under the surface, rising once more when their conversation shifts back to their present circumstances.

“Don’t you miss it?” he asks, leaning in closer. “Miss the pursuit?”

She’s all too aware that they know _exactly_ where they stand with each other and under the warm, heavy air, that knowledge is difficult to resist. It’s like a thread stretching between them, pulling her insides taut with anticipation as it draws them closer together.

Kissing him sets her skin on fire, even as the rest of her goes cold with the gravity of her mistake.

~

Rebecca is trying to scrub off the remainder of the night, clammy with either guilt or heat or adrenaline or some unholy combination of the three, when she puts her leg on the bathtub rim for the razor and catches a glimpse of green.

She shuts off the shower spray, not quite convinced that the steam isn’t making her see things.

She breaks out in goosebumps for the third time in two days, the chill flooding through her when she realizes it is exactly what she thinks it is.

“No, no no, no no _nope,_ ” she mutters, when she sees _Nathaniel_  in a tight script, curved around the circumference of her inner thigh, right where the line of her wedding garter will be.

The association alone is enough to kick up her simmering panic straight to DEFCON 3 levels.

~

It might be a sex thing, right?

It _must_ be a sex thing.

Rebecca tells herself that, even if any correlation between the nature of a relationship and where a name manifests on the body have long been debunked, with a whole body of literature to bulk it up. Not all soulmarks are romantic, she definitely has evidence of that now; just powerful. Physical chemistry certainly accounts, one kind of attachment, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to mean an emotional connection.

Or—it might not even have to be that. She’s already paid off a bride for her new wedding date –perhaps Nathaniel’s name is a sign for her to jump to it—not just sit pretty and wait for her fairy tale to happen.

Right?

It has to be, she decides. It’s not like she can tell anyone about this, especially not Paula. Sure, Paula had been dismissive about the dream and the goosebumps, but that was before there was a soulmark mucking things up.

If this name is to be significant, it will be on _her_ terms. She dives into her wedding and wears jeans and is grateful that Josh is too distracted by the wedding planning and youth basketball to question any of the rush.

But then Nathaniel brings her father to her for the wedding.

Maybe that understanding is why his name is on her, instead. The panic that has driven her over the last week recedes.

She misinterpreted the situation.

It was just another complication in her story, a moment of doubt to strengthen her conviction, to make the payoff more satisfying.

Just a few more days and everything will be perfect.

~

“I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” says Paula, and she might be smiling but there’s a wrinkle in her forehead that suggests other concerns. “Cookie? Look at me.”

But she can’t. Rebecca stares, wide-eyed at her wrist, trying to moderate her breaths, to remind herself that ebb and flow is normal, of course it’s normal. There’s definitely a logical reason that Josh’s name looks like that, like it’s sinking back into her skin. It’ll surge out richer and darker before the wedding is over.

It _must_.

~

She knows that Josh has abandoned her before Father Brah comes into the room, as the minutes drag by, and the time she should have been walking down the aisle comes and goes, for his name has turned the faded white of an old scar.

He doesn’t want to marry her. And not only does he not want to marry her, he doesn’t want to _be_ with her.

She was wrong.

She was completely wrong about him.

Rebecca runs.

~

She has time to think, time to grieve.

Time to get _angry_.

In the space of two weeks, Josh’s name has turned cast iron black and _burns_.

There’s nothing she can do to take it off—no amount of heated water that will take away the color, she’s just stuck with his name like a brand.

Very well, if it’s going to be like this at least she can have her revenge on him for marking her this way, the way no man ever should.

~

Her first few attempts fall flat and so she turns to an expert.

She sleeps with Nathaniel in exchange for his help to destroy Josh Chan and because his touch still sets her skin on fire and can distract her, make her forget even for a moment the little stab of the needle in her heart each time her eyes glide over her wrist. She tries not to pay attention to the name around her thigh and how clearly it stands out against her skin, or how his hands do not avoid it, and when she glides her hand over his chest and feels a focused kind of heat, two degrees warmer than the rest of him, she doesn’t think about what it means.

~

He might have left her at the altar, but it’s not Josh Chan who is her downfall.

She should have known that it would be Robert who ruins her.

Robert who has ruined everything he touches.

Robert who made her feel special and coveted and hungry for more, until he took away everything he promised.

His name has long since scarred over –she burned herself the night she doused his things in liquor and the resulting blisters ate away the letters.

Sometimes she forgets what that shiny patch of skin across her ankle used to be.

She made a point of forgetting him, because he didn’t fit.

But now Paula knows.

Now _everybody_ knows about him and what she did when he betrayed her.

It’s a disaster, and she’s panicking, and Nathaniel’s in her room trying to say something she actually has no time for.

“I feel things, embarrassing things, for you, and I know…” he says, and starts, and stops, and jabs his fingers at the center of his chest and Rebecca _cannot_ deal with those implications right now.

Not when everyone she loves wants to trap her.

~

They keep trying to contain her, say she’s crazy, that she needs to be locked away.

It’s all their fault—all of them. Can’t they see she’s already locked away? Their names scrawled across her every limb, impossible to escape, stretching the expanse of her skin, interlocking like chains, binding her to their imaginary concerns about her wellbeing.

She lashes out, cuts them as deeply as she can, trying not to tear at her own clothes as every name on her _sears_.

And then she runs away, not daring to check the damage.

~

Even at rock bottom, probably one of the most repulsive actions she’s ever taken, Rebecca can only be grateful that by whatever logic soulmarks run upon, _Marco_ doesn’t count.

Her right shoulder aches as she walks back to the hostel, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to look at herself again. She needs to wash, scrub off all of it, all of the disappointment and the disgust and the rage that has slipped so easily to despair, as if she can step out from under the water shiny and new.

Maybe she can wash them all off.

~

She can’t look. She doesn’t want to look. Everything aches and hurts and everything she has said has boomeranged back and cut her to ribbons. She can’t look, if she looks she’ll have confirmation that they are gone and she’s destroyed everything that was good in her life. She’ll be back to the way she was before she ever remembered Josh Chan, before she ever met any of them.

She can’t go back.

~

After she gets out of the hospital, the world feels a little hazy. All of her soulmarks are still there, albeit far softer and blurrier around the edges than before—Dr Akopian says it’s normal, after trauma. That she’ll need some time to get her bearings before she feels normal again. Everyone’s lines are watercolor-fine, but for once she’s not anxious, for Paula hasn’t left her alone since she found out and the girls are out in the waiting room.

Valencia cries as she talks about how Rebecca’s name faded, in the hour before they finally figured out what happened, how she can’t stop looking at it when she can’t see Rebecca, desperately vigilant. Darryl appears, burned nearly purple from his drive from the desert and frantic, with a similar story. How terrifed they had all been, how they have kept looking, trying to gauge how she is, whether they would lose her again.

After everything, her attempt and her diagnosis and all of the resulting emotional fallout, Rebecca finally feels something close to free for the first time in years. Josh’s name has faded so that it no longer seems so harsh against her skin—even if it hadn’t, she finally understands. Josh is not her soulmate. He never was, and it was never about him anyway.

Everyone else whose names she’s ever gathered are on her for _her_.

Not because of Josh, not in pursuit of Josh. They love her and she loves them.

She has friends.

~

She has mixed feelings about ever seeing Josh again, but she’s pleasantly surprised by Nathaniel’s unexpected appearance at her doorstep, trying to rest a bouquet of deep crimson roses against her door. They exchange a few awkward, honest words, and then he makes a graceful exit.

She thinks about it later, when he said he would be there for her. His name regains its color and clarity, which isn’t surprising; she thinks of him more than a few times, over the next few weeks. It tingles pleasantly when she does. When they talk, either in person or by text, she feels comfortable.

She thinks for a long time, on the plane back from Buffalo.

~

Her skin finally feels like hers again and, in their time together, she sees plenty of Nathaniel’s skin, out of his stiff suits, rumbled and at ease. It’s so _nice_ not to have to put up a pretense, to feel warm and happy, to have her affection easily reciprocated.

She almost doesn’t need to know where her name is, not when she can see her impact right across his face.

Almost.

He doesn’t want to tell her again, instead groaning in great dramatics and staring pointedly at the ceiling, trying to ignore the fact that she’s straddling him.

“Tell me again,” she coaxes.

“I told you once and that was enough,” he says, but yielding anyway, taking her hand and moving it to the center of his breastbone, not meeting her eyes directly. She bends down, drops a kiss right where she can feel the heat of her name.

“See? Not so difficult.”

“Hm. And mine?” he asks softly, running his hands up her thighs, the muscles in her legs twitching when he passes his hands over the last few letters.

She smiles and bends down to show him.

Unfortunately, it can’t be just that. She might be comfortable in her skin with Nathaniel, but even knowing that it’s not about soulmates and one true love, she still has to work within her head –it’s also brain chemistry and obsession and rampant impulses spinning a whole story of how she can enmesh his life into hers. She has to take a deep breath and walk away, despite the sting of his name or the ache in her heart.

~

She doesn’t have Darryl’s name.

It’s not something that she’s noticed before, and she only realizes it after she’s offers him one of her eggs, but it’s true. He has her name across her, has told her blithely about it more than once, but the way Darryl talks, he’s practically a walking address book. She’s never really thought about it before, that here is someone she very much likes, very much cares about, but who has not made an imprint on her skin.

That might change, what with the whole donating-an-egg thing, but still.

Dr Shin made a point that while soulmarks do indicate significant relationships, it isn’t a roadmap that these are the only relationships you should pay attention to.

“It’s easy to lose sight of the larger web of people you exist within,” he says. “You can be close to someone without it having to be an all-consuming, life-altering relationship. And, you don’t know who you’ve impacted, even if they’ve never influenced you.”

It’s a lesson she’s still trying to internalize, but with the shame of Valencia’s failed engagement party still fresh in her mind, she knows it has to be true.

~

In the following months, Rebecca dives deeper into her therapy. Her names continue to hold. They don’t always stay the same color or opacity, but with Dr Akopian’s coaching she learns what to expect from the normal flux of relationships.

And that’s good: that’s better than she ever hoped. She has therapy with Dr Akopian and lunches with Paula and coffees with the girl group. She can laugh and tease with the rest of them when Valencia admits that she has Beth’s name over her collarbones. She can look at Josh’s name—no longer blue, the line pencil-thin—without flinching.

Reading people is becoming easier, too, like how Paula rubs her elbow when she’s ready to go home to see Scott or when Nathaniel turns his watch over on his wrist and he’s considering something Darryl said.

He’s the odd one out: Nathaniel’s name remains perplexingly, consistently vivid. It doesn’t make sense –at the very least the sheen should be off by now. Sure, they are friends, and law firm co-owners, so influencing each other isn’t surprising. But it feels uncomfortably tied up in their sex thing, and their being-exes thing, and Rebecca tries not to think about it too hard about how all of those relationships might be converging.

She brings the matter up with Dr Akopian, on a day she feels particularly muddled. Dr Akopian listens, elbow resting across the armrest, chin in her hand, gaze steady. Some days she lets her exasperation show, but never when Rebecca speaks to her directly about these matters, no matter how mangled her language.

“Of course, he means something to me,” she explains. “But not like _that_.”

“Like what?”

Rebecca shifts uncomfortably in her seat, staring down at her sandaled feet; _Noelle Akopian_ peeks up at her from between the tan leather straps encircling her ankle, curling around it, spreading over the burn.

“You know, that. I mean, it’s not like he’s my soulmate. It would be stupid for me to think about him like that. It’s not like I _have_ a soulmate. It’s just…emotional graffiti, or something.”

“Do you really think that? What is a soulmate to you, Rebecca?”

But Rebecca doesn’t have an answer for her.

Well, not one that she can voice aloud, even after eight months of redefinition.

~

A soulmate is someone you feel in tune with, who understands you and you understand them in a particular way. You can have more than one, because there are a thousand different ways to understand a person. There is no lightning-strike moment, no one-body limit to the number of soulmates in your life. It’s not effortless. But any soulmate who has known the other for a long time can read the other person as easily as themselves, the way she has grown to read her girls and they read her right back.

She wants that, when she can bear to consider it. To have that with someone, with Nathaniel.

But not now. Not when her mind still takes control of the story in such terrifying ways.

~

Trent comes back, and then leaves again.

Except he doesn’t, this time sneaking right into her brain and setting up camp in the darkest crevices.

He whispers how alike they are, how everything he has ever done to her is not so different than every scheme she has executed at the expense of everyone she has ever said she loved, by intent or by proxy. He whispers they are the same: they will do anything to be loved.

She tries not to think of him, but he’s seeping in, projecting nightmares of his name across her face, down her back like a brand.

Every morning, she finds herself checking the mirror, twisting around to look at her back, scratching and squinting at new marks on her skin, trying to keep the nauseating terror at bay.

The thought of his name on her makes her feel hot and sick and she has to run to cool herself, to distract herself from the possibility.

But in the shower, she can see the names of everyone she’s lied to and every heart she’s broken, deliberately or not. All of them demand amends.

The decision comes easily, almost naturally. It will _hurt_ , but she will do right by them.

There are debts to be paid and her body is the ledger.

 


End file.
